


Of Colors

by CommunityOfSilence



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Under the Red Hood
Genre: (No beta we die like men), Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd is Red Hood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:34:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24462838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommunityOfSilence/pseuds/CommunityOfSilence
Summary: In which Jason Todd describes the colors he's seen throughout his first and second life.And in which Jason makes the color red his own.
Relationships: Roy Harper & Jason Todd, Roy Harper & Koriand'r & Jason Todd
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	Of Colors

Grey were the walls of the apartment; grey would mark the evening in which his mother took another beating; grey would paint the Crime Alley as he stole again; grey was his blood as another man beat him.

Grey was the sky to which he would look up to and pray that someday, somewhere he and his mother would be saved. 

Grey was the hope that faded each day. 

Grey was his mother when she died.

With that, grey turned into black.

Black was the cape that took him in the darkest of nights, stealing him away from the grey that had been his first companion. Black was his comfort, safety and eventually even family. 

Grey had been his mother and father.

Black had been his Dad.

And ever so slowly, he himself turned black. Becoming a part of the black and white family, with blue markings that threatened to lash out. Soon, he rose from the ashes of grey and made the colors that he wore his own. A charming mix of yellow, red and green. When the yellow took over, he formed his own methods, became something that was frowned upon by the color he had so lovingly called _family_. When the two of them clashed, they were like water and oil. Never backing down; never stopping and never united.

The more arguments came, the more he yearned for grey again. 

Grey had been his first in everything, so he trusted grey to be his always as well.

His trust was shattered into multiple pieces of his first color. And with that, green ripped apart his bright yellow wings.

He had liked green. He had also liked these little but precious plants and flowers that were associated with it. Fragile, helpless, but utterly beautiful. They seemed out of place in this violent world and yet there they were, everlasting. Jason had checked up on his neighbor's flower every now and then, back in Crime Alley. Watched it bloom into a beautiful color from the window of his former home, with green always following it.

A color that marked its possessions.

Green was the comedian's laughter, green was the crowbar.

Green was every swing that hit him, green was his blood _._

Everywhere he looked it was green. Trapped in a poisonous maze with no escape for the dying.

Mercy, he had wished for mercy in the deepest corner of his self. 

Where had been his grey, his everything?

He knew better than to ask.

Born from his blood, flourishing under the endless onslaught of pain, a flower just like he remembered rose inside his collapsed lung. It grew and left him breathless, rendered him speechless.

The color?

_Green._

A dark night it was, when his last moments were spent in a warehouse that bathed in his torture. Dark enough for him to hope it would become darker, until it was black.

Hope, the black cape would save him.

Because it belonged to his last family.

Belonged to his **_Dad_ **.

So he waited and endured.

A good soldier can hold his own until reinforcement came.

A good partner waited for the other to come along.

A good _son_ trusted his father.

But then again, maybe he never had been either of those things.

When a madman repeatedly beats you with a crowbar, when you taste the blood in your mouth and when red taints your sclera, you begin to realize things. 

And in that specific moment, Jason realized Bruce won’t come for him.

From that point on, it was only a matter of time. And with every tick, another rib would be broken, another bone destroyed. The melody of laughter assaulted his brain, carved his mind open for the green to crawl in. Green devoured and devoured, until he and the warehouse became one. 

He didn’t find it in himself to be angry at the color that gave him a home. He wasn’t sad either, not in the sense you would expect it at least. 

Grey and black, both once so precious to him, both leaving him in the end. Makes him wonder, what was it about him that always failed at keeping family.

It had to be something he did.

And as the night whispered it’s goodbye to him and the sickening lullaby faded away, there was one question left.

Had it been his fault or that of his family?

An explosion was his answer.

  
  


The colors of his world vanished alongside him. No more grey apartment walls, no black capes, no sickly green laughter and no more of his beloved yellow. His beginning, his hope and his identity didn’t matter on the other side of the coin. Beyond the veil, away from the vibrant essence of the living, there was nothing. 

It should have pained him to see all the things that made Jason Todd _Jason_ gone. But he hadn’t cared.

For once, in his very short life, he had been at _peace._

Death wasn’t this giant monster parents would tell their children about in bedtime stories, but neither was it a paradise that would grant all your wishes.

Death was just.

To him, it felt like the one night where he had been allowed to sleep in Bruce’s bed. One nightmare too much about the many tales of the Crime Alley and he stumbled into the dark bedroom. He remembered that he was so embarrassed the first time around, he wouldn't even say anything and just stare at his feet. He feared that, if he couldn’t even get over his nightmares, he would never live up to the mantle of Robin.

So what had Bruce done?

Tucked him in wordlessly, as if he had known all along.

And as he had snuggled deeper against Bruce, Jason experienced for the first time the feeling of being _content_

That was what death felt like. To lay inside a warm bed and just _be_.

There no longer was a fight to win. It was time to rest.

  
  


Resting didn’t mean to wake up in his own coffin. Dark and cold, his little home inside the earth. He screamed and screamed, but dead men tell no tales. His wounds remained, wrapping him into a bloody present. 

There was a rotten smell inside the coffin.

He didn’t want to think about it. Red ribbons marred his fingers as he broke them in order to escape. He _couldn’t_ think, his only will was to survive. 

And then, he was thrown into something.

There was a deep silence. No noises, not even his own heart was heard. He was floating, letting the unknown substance guide his body. There was a sense of peace in him.

As if he was wrapped in a warm blanket. Was it death again?

Suddenly, he is drowning. He struggles and struggles, the agony of so startling being _awake_ was almost too much. 

He opens his eyes.

The substance was once more **green**. 

Jason truly believed that a part of him never really resurfaced from the pit.

For a while, there was this haze that overshadowed everything. It was easier to pretend that all of that wasn’t real, that he was still dreaming. For only later he would find out that the pain of being thrown into the Lazarus Pit wasn’t the act itself.

It was the harsh realisation that the memory of a kid who would sleep with his dad no longer existed. That the kid would only grow up to be dead anyway. 

That he no longer was that kid.

The fog around his mind began to grow, until Talia handed him silently a newspaper. There was an article with a picture of Robin saving yet again the day with Batman. 

The news article was made recently.

Yellow, green and red, those are his. _Had been_ his. He used to look at himself in the mirror and simply smile because of how much the costume meant to him.

Jason Todd is Robin.

Then, who was the illusion?

Him or the one in the picture?

Which of them was the real one?

Which of them was just the bad dream?

His head vanished inside a red helmet, the answer was obvious.

He remembers giving into the vengeance. The adrenaline and the feeling of doing _something good_ when he dealt out his own brand of justice was more than he anticipated, almost enough to make him forget that he was wrong in so many different ways. 

Vengeance was an easy face to wear, until it was not.

When the showdown came between a bat, a comedian and a dead bird, he wasn’t the winner. The batarang slicing into his neck wasn’t a spoil of war.

He doesn’t remember how he had survived the explosion with a wound like that, but he did. 

He almost wishes that he hadn’t. He wouldn’t then need to live with the weight of Bruce’s choice. That he chose the Joker over him.

_Green and black, interwoven with each other. An endless circle of struggle that neither is willing to leave, for they’re inseparable._

After that, he travels for a while. He was no longer welcome in Gotham after all. And maybe, a tiny part of him also runs away from the mausoleum of dead colors. 

Time flies by, flowers bloom in spring and are crushed when winter hits.

Jason doesn’t know who he is without his mask.

He should have been happy to see so many different parts of the world. It was something the younger him always wished to see.

A constant reminder that now, he wasn’t the same _Jay_ he used to be and never will be again.

And then, in a sudden change of fate, his bland and cold world collided with that of purple and red. Kori and Roy had to go through things as well, but they remained vibrant people. 

They weren’t broken toys like he was.

But they didn’t seem to care. The bond that grew with each month of companionship took him by such surprise, he wasn’t even able to do something against it. The laughter and smiles rebuild things inside of him that he thought he had lost forever. While it was true that parts of him never resurfaced from the pit, the remaining him began to stitch back together slowly. It wasn't enough to truly recover and maybe it will remain so for the rest of his life. But there was something he regained. Something more precious to him than healing.

He found family again.

In the end, Jason Todd doesn’t wear the color red because of the pain, vengeance or even sadness.

Jason made the color red his own once more, because it had been his best friend’s too.

And as he leaves the grave similar to his own, he parts with the promise of following Roy’s advice.

To be selfish once in a while. And so he returns to Gotham.

**Author's Note:**

> [Say hello to me on Tumblr!](https://communityofsilence.tumblr.com/)


End file.
